This morning I booked my flight back to Cambodia. It’s funny to think that exactly a year ago I was sitting in a bar in Phnom Penh, surrounded by expats cheering on the Australian soccer team in the Asian Cup final against Japan. I had only been in town for a couple of nights and didn’t know a soul. I was keen to see the match and hopefully broaden my social circle, which was more of a dot than a circle at that stage - consisting only of myself. Surely, being a friendly Aussie girl who loves soccer, it would be easy for me to front up and make some insta-friends, right?! Nope. I sat on a stool the whole night and didn’t talk to a soul. It was painful. Everyone was in groups and my timidity got the better of me. Still – I thought – I came out, enjoyed the match and would find other ways to make friends.

I did. And I am incredibly excited to be seeing them again in less than two weeks.

A couple of months after arriving in PP two of my friends came with me to Koh Rong for the Khmer New Year holiday. Aaron, Shirley and I frequently hung out for happy hours together in PP, so for a change we decided to go to an island off the south coast and hang out for happy hours… on an island. It was paradise, except for the 100+ sand fly bites I brought back with me. Apart from that I loved it.

Hope you enjoy my amateur video/slideshow skillz.

Woah – hellooooo 2012! Why did no-one tell me we’ve reached a new year!? Probably because I just got back from an incredibly idyllic summer camping trip, totally unplugged from phone and computer in a little campsite near Eden (draw your own conclusion there). This was me:

Because of the lack of technology and the abundance of snoozy afternoons laying in the shade of Eucalyptus trees, I had plenty of time to think about the year gone by. It was a MASSIVE year for me, and I don’t use capital letters lightly. I spent 9 months overseas, started a new career in public health, met a bunch of people who are the beez kneez, and went to 3 weddings and a funeral (so close to the cliché, dammit!)

So, while apparently everyone else has already galloped into the new year, I am going to take a look back at a few moments of 2011. Some are fleeting, seemingly insignificant, events; but for one reason or another they really affected me.

Some of my favourites, in no particular order:

1) Appropriate, considering we have just had the silly season. On my first day in Phnom Penh in February I was wandering around in a general daze when I heard a shrill version of “Jingle Bells” ringing out. Looking around in confusion I discovered it was coming from the truck just behind me as it reversed out a driveway. Innapropriate use of Western cultural icons – tick - back in my beloved random Asia.

2) Brick Lane, London, August -  Standing Jumping around in a packed club watching my English cousin perform with his band. I’ve seen Dan perform in the early stages of his career but never in the incarnation I witnessed that night – I remember turning to my other cousin, who was beside me at the gig, and saying something along the lines of “Holy S*^t! He’s a freakin rockstar!”.

After years of work and commitment Dan signed a recording and publishing deal with a major label this year. Nothing makes me happier than seeing loved ones’ lives take a turn down Awesome Street. And to be able to be there when it happens? Elation doesn’t even come close to describing it. Distance can kill family relationships so I’m incredibly thankful that I got to spend a lot of time with my London relatives this year.

Here’s a video of one of my favourite Bastille songs (perhaps for obvious nomadic reasons).That gig at Brick Lane is weaved into the montage so if you look REALLY hard you’ll see my 15 nanoseconds of fame at 3:02ish.

3) My Best Friend’s Wedding. Not the movie, although I was kind of hoping for a lobster restaurant singalong. Heather, my best friend since I was 14, got married in November. The wedding day itself was chock full of happy and I felt everything you can imagine when you stand next to your best friend on one of the best days of her life. For me though, it was the rehearsal on the Thursday night prior where the joy hit Everest heights.  It was just the bridal party, in casual clothes, in an empty church that I used to attend; No dress-ups, no formalities, just excitement, fun and Thai food for dinner.

4) Watching a storm roll through the valley of my friend’s dad’s house in the Eastern Townships, Canada. I already waxed lyrical about how much I love summer thunderstorms. It’s infinitely cooler when you’re staying with a bunch of nutty people who run out onto the lawn with you to look up in awe and childlike excitement at the lightning bolts crackling through the sky.  Jodi, Cale, Button – let’s all become professional storm chasers, yeah?

5) Watching the Cambodia vs Kyrgystan football match in Phnom Penh with Lina, eating ice-blocks (mine was shaped like a rocket). It’s the simple things in life. I wrote a whole post about it here.

6) Frogs legs at Le Square Trousseau, Paris. In July I met up with my parents and aunt for a couple of weeks in France before we joined up with a bunch of family and friends for two weeks in Tuscany. My dad adores food and wine and researches travel to the nth degree so that he (and his fortunate companions) get to sample a stellar selection of local cuisine. Our first night in together we ate at a local bistro in Ledru Rollin, just around the corner from our apartment. As the wine was poured and the frogs legs were placed before me I thought to myself – this is going to be a good month, a very very good month. And it was.

7) A day hanging with Lauren in Oakland, California, September. Lauren has the Oakland Tribune building tattooed on her upper arm. All the time that we hung out together people kept stopping her to comment on it. At the coffee shop; in the street after we had finished our Puerto Rican feast; in the bar we went to after wandering around the cemetery. It wasn’t until we plonked down on the grass next to the lake to watch the sunset that I saw the building in real life. But by then I kinda felt like I’d already seen it in real life.

 8) Rooftop BBQ in Brooklyn, NY.  It was just like your average BBQ in Sydney, with just a few replacements. Instead of a grassy patch under the trees we were situated on a rooftop in the middle of industrial Greenpoint. Instead of looking east across the ocean we looked across the East River to the island of Manhattan. Instead of sausages we ate S’Mores. Instead of Boag’s beer we drank Brooklyn Brewery’s Pennant Ale. Instead of my Sydney buddies I was with New Yorker buddies - Mike, Jordana and Dana - three of the coolest cats I know. Then the sun went down and it looked like this (look below) –ya know, just your average BBQ.

9) Running into a bear in Sequoia National Park, California. Here’s a tip: If you’re going to go travelling by yourself in California National Parks, don’t watch a “World’s Gnarliest Bear Attacks – The Disembowelment Special” TV program a couple of weeks beforehand – thanks Mike. I was terrified of bears before I got to Sequoia and Yosemite but at least that terror compelled me to read every skerrick of information I could find on how to deal with bear encounters. So I went into survival mode when I heard a great crash and whiplashed around to see a baby black bear about 20 metres away who had been climbing a tree. I clapped my hands and stamped my feet and performed the chicken dance, literally. I was mostly afraid of where the mother was though, as I had read that the worst place to be caught is between a mother and her baby. I didn’t see the mama bear but as the little bear got bored of my dance performance and walked away I turned around to see a very excited Czech couple who were about 50 metres down the path and had seen the whole thing. We exchanged an excited conversation, buzzed by our “near death encounter” – ha ha. It’s probably like when visitors freak out in Australia over a tiny little spider and I shrug condescendingly and say “No worries! It’s probably more scared of you than you are of it” – except that spiders can’t disembowel you.

 10) About a million other memorable and affecting moments that I spent with fellow travellers, friends, family and colleagues all over the world - and the times that I spent by myself, just being the human sponge. In Quebec City in Canada I was travelling with a good Canadian buddy of mine, Cailin, and I tried poutine for the first time. I was insanely happy to try it as some of my friends (*ahem* Jodi) had been talking it up nonstop. I think the photo below basically sums up how happy and excited I was about my experiences last year. I really got to have my poutine and eat it to. I cannot believe my good fortune and am immeasurably thankful.

I hope your 2011 was as great as mine, but I f it was more of a trough than a peak then never fear, I am sure your year of fortune and wonder is just around the river bend (quoth Pocahontas).

Thanks for reading and commenting throughout 2011. I hope you’ve enjoyed following along and I really appreciate your support!

Looking for my 2012 resolutions? I’ll be following Mr Curly’s lead (See above)

Looking for my 2012 plans? Here they are -->        ?

Every time I went to the pool at Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh I was always struck by how very un-Olympic it was. The peeling paint and crumbling cement blocks fall pretty far short of the “Faster! Higher! Stronger!“ Olympic ideals. It never bothered me though, I enjoy seeing structures in various stages of dilapidation. It just means that those walls have been around, they’re seen a thing or two, got some stories to tell. And it’s not like the place itself is dead, heck no. There is no place more alive and buzzing in Phnom Penh of an evening than the Olympic Stadium. Hordes of middle-aged women come to do their aerobics, spaced evenly along the precipice of the tiered seating, silhouetted and swinging their limbs, cheerleaders for a non-existent sporting event. There are young people too, kids in school uniform thwacking their badminton shuttlecocks into the air, which is filled with smoke from nearby food vendors.        

From the direction of my apartment I had to walk up a steep rampart to reach the common area where the crowds gathered, the cement seating descending to the stadium floor and the pool on my left and right respectively. Every time I emerged over the rise at the top of the ramp there would be some new food stall or salesperson positioned there. Once I walked up to find a tarpaulin spread on the ground with about 30 giant stuffed animals piled on top of each other, those life-sized ones that you find at fun fairs. Surrounding the pile was a group of two dozen adults, money in hand, bargaining straight-faced for their favoured fluffy toy.

For me, swimming at Olympic started as a practical decision. It cost $1.50 per entrance, much better than the next cheapest option of $5.00 at a local indoor pool. Then there was the length – a full 50 metres – basically all of which I had to myself. From a swimming perspective that is about where the attraction ends. Being an outdoor pool, and suffering from a distinct lack of maintenance, it wasn’t the most pleasant swimming experience. The water was so thick with grime that you could only ever see about 3 metres ahead of you. This wasn’t such a huge problem though because the Cambodians who used the pool only clung to the perimeter, so there was no threat of oncoming traffic. However, I hate to think of the parasites. Don’t think of the parasites! My friends used to laugh when I told them about the state of the pool. It spoke volumes that no-one ever wanted to accompany me on a visit. It’s not as bad as it sounds though, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. The swimming wasn’t what kept me coming back. It was the oddities, the brief encounters with people, that made it worth the risk of parasitic infection.

A sample of encounters:

Waving hello to the life-guards, resplendent in the powder blue and white stripes of their Argentinean football team shirts. Don’t ask me where they got the shirts or why Argentina was the pick of the bunch when it came to uniform choice. I simply add it to my ever-lengthening WTFcambodia? list. Whilst I was never confident of their ability to save my life, their odd choice of shirt endeared them to me immediately.

“Lik”, 20-something, Vietnamese. I met Lik at the end of the pool when we both took a break at the same time. He was a good swimmer and his English was superb so I figured that he probably wasn’t Cambodian. Correct. He was the first non-Anglo immigrant to Cambodia that I had met, a young Vietnamese guy working in one of the banks in town. Our conversation was easy and interesting. However, I was having a simultaneous out-of-body-experience (which sometimes happens when I travel) along the lines of:

“THIS IS SO RANDOM!
YOU’RE HAVING A CASUAL CONVERSATION WITH AN IMMIGRANT VIETNAMESE BANKER.
IN YOUR SWIMMING COSTUME.
IN A POOL.
IN PHNOM PENH.
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH”

A playful puppy dog. He was actually a young guy, probably around the age of 14, but he followed me like a puppy . It started with a hilarious back-and-forth conversation, him speaking in Khmer, me in English.

Him: HALLO!
Me: HALLO! You speak English?
Him: HALLO!
Me: *laughs*
Him: something something something Kampuchea? (Kampuchea = Cambodia)
Me: Ummmmm… Ja (yes) Kampuchea.
Him: *laughs*

He then proceeded to follow me to the other end of the pool, except he couldn’t swim so he crab-crawled his way along the edge to the other end. We had the same conversation again “something something Kampuchea?” I nodded, smiled, indicated that was going to swim another lap. This little routine continued for a good twenty minutes, him becoming more and more puffed with the exertion of following me back and forth, his tongue starting to loll out of his mouth like a playful puppy.

Young girl .I only ever once saw a young girl in the pool, although older women occasionally made an appearance. One day there she was, the most beautiful young-adolescent girl, hanging out with a bunch of similarly-aged boys. She had high cheek-bones and bright eyes and was fooling about on a big inflated inner-tube, holding her own against the others. She reminded me of me of my days as a tomboy and sparked a tiny fire of hope for gender equality in a decidedly uneven society. As I walked past on my way out I gave her a big Girl Power grin and wave. She swam frantically over to the side of the pool. I crouched down and she grabbed my hand and shook it.

It sounds like such an obnoxious, colonial “mixing with the natives” attitude but I really enjoyed being with locals in their own environment, rather than an overpriced hotel pool. I liked that each time I went I would hand over my 500 riel to the girl behind the changeroom counter (whose name I sadly didn’t write down) to mind my clothes. Even though we didn’t have the words to communicate, we at least built some sort of surface level relationship just by repeatedly engaging in a simple transaction. It also felt good to remember that the public facilities weren’t perfect but were perfectly adequate. The bubbles may have had to battle harder to make their way through the muck to rise to the surface but their density gave them a nice, deepened, resonance as they streamed past my ears.

And whilst I swam along, thinking of what an apt metaphor the pool is for Cambodian society, some little wormy worms were probably making their home in the walls of my intestinal tract.But that’s OK; I consider them a souvenir.

So, instead, I am just going to say that going (almost) directly to Paris after 5 months in Phnom Penh was a total mind bender. A definite contributor to the rough re-entry was the fact that I had to break my work contract and leave Cambodia early, so I wasn’t really mentally prepared to be back in the west. I can’t think of another time when I have swung so rapidly between two extremes on the economic and cultural spectrum.

The last few times I had been to Paris I felt like I was wearing rose-coloured glasses. I was enchanted by the streetscapes, the chic people inhabiting those streetscapes and the delicious food. This time it felt like those rose-coloured glasses had been tinted even more, making it a surreal landscape where, to be honest, I felt like I was floating along on a cloud of disbelief for most of the time. Just before I arrived I downloaded an Android photo application for my phone which included a lomography filter as one of its features. It makes every photo look beautiful, regardless of the normalcy of the scene, much like the city itself. I like the effect though, because it is a good reflection of the haze that I was in when I was there.

So, here are some of the photos and observations I made about Paris.

The city is just really really ridiculously good looking. Also, sometimes the French people really do conform to their stereotype, baguette and all.
 
If you turn down the little alleyways you might find a whole flower market blossoming there, and even a well placed flag to remind you of what country you are in.
 
Sometimes the walls provide handy hints on baton twirling and alluring dance positions.
 
Sometimes you have to wait a long time for the bus.
 
A better option is the metro, the underground stations that look like something out of Day of The Triffids.1
1An obscure post-apocalyptic 1950s novel and hilarious 1980s TV series where giant plants take over the world. Must watch.

 
To avoid the triffids you can take a boat trip along the river. Watch your head.
 
Or the tacky tourist train, which, in Paris, is classier than your average.
 
After all that commuting you can relax in the sun in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Wear sunscreen though, otherwise you’ll end up looking leathery, and not the nice-Hermes-bag type leathery.
 
If lounging in the park isn’t refreshing enough it might be time for an afternoon pick-me-up in the form of a traditional aperitif. Pastis, a licorice flavoured liquor mixed with water, is pretty gross - but at least you’ll feel like you’re having an “authentic” experience.
 
You may come across two little pairs of legs sticking out into an alleyway, and your curiosity may be sparked. What secrets are they sharing in this hole in the wall? You might continue walking past and see two young girls hugging, one of them sobbing uncontrollably - sharing a hole in the heart.
 
I discovered the reason why Parisians are so beautiful. They simply mimic the environment in which they are brought up.
 
Everybody knows which particular tower lies to the left of this photo. Everybody IN the know, knows that all the fun is happening on the right. Carousel baby. Yeah.
 
I want to live in the house with the blue door.
 
If I did live in the house with the blue door I would make regular visits to the Palace of Versailles where my favourite dragon-riding-cherub lives. That is on bad-ass chubby angel.
 
Paris, where food is a feat of engineering.
 
And a window full of wind instruments looks like an art installation.
 
And the food in the windows is too tempting for words.
 

Parisians have a reputation for being somewhat brusque and cold to visitors. I didn’t find that at all, but just in case it is always good to travel with someone who likes to laugh and lighten the mood. (someone like my mum, who, seconds before I took this photo, was pretending to be one of the gargoyles on the Sacre Couer) …. Did I just lose all my cool points?
 
And that was the city of lights in all its mind-bending beauty.
Despite their colonial connection, it’s hard to believe that Paris and Phnom Penh exist in the same universe let alone on the same planet.

Earlier this year I sat in a room with a man who oversaw the deaths of 15,000 people. With no more than 10 metres and a glass divider between us it was easy to get a good look at him. Kaing Guek Eav, commonly know as “Duch”, was chief of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh during the Khmer Rouge regime. He was dressed in run-of-the-mill khaki trousers and a collared shirt, which looked one size too big for him, like he had shrunk, like grandpas sometimes look. I didn’t want him to look like a grandpa. I wanted him to look like a homicidal maniac with bloodshot eyes, devil’s horns and the word MONSTER tattooed across his forehead in big red capital letters. exclamation mark. exclamation mark. Of course I knew he wouldn’t look like that (damn you rational brain) but I so badly wanted his external appearance to match what I thought his soul must look like, eeeevil.

At the time I wasn’t sure why I went to Duch’s appeal hearing. I mean, I knew the surface motivations. My housemate had been interning at the court for the past two months and we had had some interesting discussions about the trial; I cared about the country I was living in and wanted to learn more about the genocide; and from an intellectually curious perspective I wanted to know how the international criminal court worked. The thing is, I didn’t really need to go there to discover all those things. I could have read about it, or just talked to my housemate more. I think, in retrospect, the reason I wanted to go there was to make it real. There has always been a part of me that just cannot believe that a human being is capable of mass killings. I’ve read history books, watched documentaries of survivors recounting their experiences and even been to mass-killing sites at Auschwitz and Tuol Sleng, but it’s not the same. I wanted to see what a killer looked like in person.

The experience itself was bizarrely theatre-like. The court is in a specially-built complex about 20 minutes drive from the centre of Phnom Penh. After security you hang around in a glorified chook-pen until the court opens and you pass through another security check to get into the main gallery. About 400 seats are laid out amphitheatre-style facing the court room with large panes of glass rising to the ceiling to separate the two areas. When I arrived there were thick blue curtains drawn across the dividing glass, which opened dramatically to reveal the empty courtroom before the legal players entered from stage left. 95% of the audience were Cambodian. I wondered if their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins or children had been murdered, what it must be like for them. I wondered if the glass partition was bulletproof.

The court is conducted in Cambodian and English, with each of the prosecution, defence and judges speaking thein one of the two languages and a real-time translation provided for speakers of the alternate language. In the audience we were all given headphones, which I used when Cambodian was being spoken. Unfortunately there was no ‘legalese for dummies’ translation so I wasn’t able to understand all of the proceedings. From what I gathered, the prosecution were arguing for an increase on the 35 year sentence that had been handed down in 2010 because it did not give sufficient weight to the severity of crimes committed (among other reasons).The defence were arguing for a reduction of the 35 year sentence because Duch doesn’t fit the category of “most responsible” for the mass-killings and (did I hear this correctly!?!?!?) there is a maximum 30 year jail term under Cambodian law.

After the tribunal, tired after concentrating for hours and still trying to get all the facts and arguments straight, I was making my way back toward the main road to grab a tuk-tuk into town. A 4WD pulled up and a French guy wound down his window and asked if I wanted a lift. I was walking with a friend that I had run into at the trial so we both jumped in. One of my favourite aspects of living in Phnom Penh was consistently running into really knowledgeable people and, happily, this was just such an occasion. Thierry Cruvellier was a journalist following the trials and turned out to be an expert on the workings of international criminal tribunals. He followed the Rwandan tribunal full time from 1997 to 2002 and wrote a book detailing his findings. Lucky me! Unlucky him! I’m pretty sure he regretted picking us up the minute we unleashed our volley of questions. Poor guy.

Our discussions with Thierry revealed a lot about the complexity of running these tribunals. The court in Cambodia is technically what they call a hybrid court, the “Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia” (ECCC), with emphasis being on the “in”. It is funded by the UN but operates within the current Cambodian judicial system, which is why the defence were able to make the argument about the maximum 30 year jail term. Thierry also explained the defences 2nd argument, that Duch shouldn’t be classified as ‘the most responsible’ . You see, Tuol Sleng was one of many prison and extermination centres across the county. It just so happens that most of the other centres destroyed their evidence more effectively as the Khmer Rouge retreated to the northern border with Thailand. There were many more men of equal rank with Duch, he was just the one that they had sufficient evidence to persecute in a court of law. It could be argued that he might be judged more harshly in place of all those who aren’t able to be persecuted. Did that make me feel sorry for him? Not really. It made me angry that the others got away with it.

Thanks to Phnom Penh’s afternoon traffic we also had time to discuss the issue of rank and responsibility. Who are “the most responsible”? There have been many psychological investigations into the effects of power and authority on behaviour. (Milgram’s being the most famous)  In short, people are capable of doing incredibly inhumane things when ordered to do so by superiors, even when it seemingly conflicts their moral predisposition. The phenomenon is often used as an excuse for lower-ranking perpetrators whose defence is that they were merely following orders. I understand this to a degree, particularly when families are used for leverage. However, someone has to be responsible at some point, right? We can’t only ever go after the man at the top of the pyramid can we?
 
Several months after that day at the trial and the car ride with Thierry I learned that Duch’s sentence was reduced to 19 years. In his late 60s now, he could still live long enough to be released! I am definitely in favour of reformist jail systems and I really want to trust the court’s decision but it’s really hard to believe that justice has been done in this case.

My housemate said that in some regards Duch’s trial was a test-run of the ECCC for the much bigger second trial of four of the head honchos of Pol Pot’s regime, including the former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan. However, things have had a rough start and don’t bode well for that trial. I read a recent report in the Sydney Morning Herald that the ECCC is in disarray; there have been paralysing disagreements, accusations of corruption and malpractice, in fact the investigating judges’ entire UN legal team has resigned. The reasons for resignation will be of no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the decidedly bent nature of the Cambodian government. As the SMH reporter says “The German co-investigating judge Siegfried Blunk quit the trials on Monday, citing interference by the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hen Sen, and other government officials.”

I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to work at the tribunal. I went for one day and found it annoying that I couldn’t be like Wile E Coyote and just throw an oversized anvil at Duch and be done with it (again, if only cartoons were real). The whole experience was just so aggravatingly civilised and formal and devoid of emotions. That’s the legal system for you though, and I know that’s how it has to be and that’s how it should be. I achieved what I hoped to achieve by going to the tribunal; the Khmer Rouge atrocities became much more real to me by seeing Duch in the flesh. It’s utterly mindboggling to think that I could potentially see him in the flesh again someday, no longer behind the glass divider of the tribunal court, but out on the street. Is that justice? I don't know, but I think any experience that makes you think about philosophy in more 3D terms is probably an experience worth having.

Info:
Photo credit for public gallery photo - ECCC gallery on Flickr
Website of the ECCC -  including visitor information for Khmer Rouge Tribunal public hearings

It’s 5am and I’ve just awoken from seven glorious hours of post-long-haul-travel sleep. It’s till dark but the kookaburras are telling me that dawn is on its way. Later I will put on my big fluffy dressing gown and ugg boots and make myself a cup of tea. Later still I will go to my best friend’s house; she’ll show me her wedding dress and I’ll tell her about this one time overseas when…. But right now I’m just going to listen to the kookaburras laugh and let myself be swamped by the feeling of being home.

It’s 8.5 months since I left Sydney and 3.5 since I last published anything on here. I just opened the “blog” file in my documents folder and cast an eye over the 20-odd stories that remain half finished from my time abroad.  There are hand-written notes too, deep in the bowels of my as-yet-unpacked backpack, somewhere underneath my cousins’ band’s 7” vinyl and my free San Francisco Giants supporters' cup. I had good intentions for this blog, to share stories frequently with my family and friends and anonymous internet surfers. It didn’t really happen because of what writing became for me while I was away. It became “the dump”. When I was a telephone counsellor "the dump" is what we used to label the 10-20 minute monologue at the start of a call when someone in crisis is given the opportunity to tell their story. It’s sometimes triggered by a particular event, often accompanied by huge amounts of emotion, and provides the caller with a massive sense of release; they literally dump their feelings on you. I dumped my feelings on a blank Word document. The content of my writing wasn’t necessarily that emotional but in retrospect it is easy to see that my frame of mind was. I always wrote when I was feeling so overwhelmed by my experiences that I just needed to pour it out somewhere. Most of the time it came from a place of manic happiness or awe, only a very few were accompanied by confusion or negative affect. Either way, writing became a massive outlet for me to dump. Hence, the stories I wrote are in need of some hefty editing. red pen required.

So, I think that’s what I’m going to do over the next couple of months. I’m going to reacquaint myself with my home, go to a bunch of weddings, and tell you about this one time overseas when…

Me: I know absolutely nothing about Kyrgyzstan.
My friend: Me either, except that they kidnap their brides.
Me: um…ok.

It wasn’t the kind of conversation I would regularly have at a football game, but it wasn’t really a regular football game either, so in that way it was oddly appropriate. We were at Olympic Stadium to watch one of the group matches of the President's Cup. In a real clash-of-the-titans matchup, the mighty Phnom Penh Crown were taking on the top Kyrgyzstani club team, Neftchi Kochkor-Ata. So the conversation about the wife-kidnapping culture in Kyrgyzstan wasn’t entirely apropos of nothing.

The President's Cup is the Champions League for what they call “emerging nations”. For those of you who aren’t football fans, Champions Leagues are when all the top club teams of particular nations enter a tournament to become the champion club in that region. (Europe, Asia, Africa) The other teams in the President's Cup competition are the top club sides from nations such as Burma, Tajikistan and the Palestinian Authority (!).  So, in all honesty, I was there for two reasons. 1) To see just how bad these teams really were 2) To support the initiative because, when I put my mocking self on mute for just a second, I actually really support what they are trying to do. After all, I am passionate about football and I believe that the grass roots need to be fertilised so that they can grow big and strong and be mown into those neat parallel lines that they make on professional football pitches.

I haven’t been to a European Champions League match yet but I have been to my fair share of Premier League games (hands up Chelsea fans! Yeah! Man U or Liverpool fans need to leave my blog. right now.) so I did notice that there were a just a few things different about this club champions match, which definitely put it into the “emerging nations” category. I am trying really hard not to be condescending about the game but I think I might be failing miserably.  Just know that any mocking comes from an affectionate place, not sinister one. So, here are the slight differences I noticed ….

1) The Players.
There are no Messis here, nor Lampards, nor Forlans*; they are mostly Cambodian, and not very good. On a more fascinating note though, there is a whole sub-population of talented Nigerian footballers playing in the national league here.  They are essentially just making a living out of their game, like you would a regular job, and go to whichever Asian club provides them with the best offer. I had no idea about this travelling band of footballers or “migrant labour” as my friend so aptly put it. It’s not really so different from the transfer systems in Europe, it’s just that it’s a much more precarious lifestyle in underfunded clubs, even more so in a country where contracts mean next to nothing. The Nigerians certainly get some attention here, both on the pitch and off it. We had dinner with a couple of the guys after the game at a local street-food place and it was astonishing how openly the local Cambodians at the other tables stared at them.
*Diego Forlan, the most ridiculously good looking player in football. (see golden locks below - plays for Uruguay) and on the right are Crown (in red) and Neftchi players.

2) The crowd
I can still vividly recall the first professional football match I went to. I was 12 and went to see a Chelsea match with my dad, brother and cousin. This was back in the day when Gianfranco Zola was tearing up the pitch and the stadium thundered with the chant “ZOLA, ZOLA, ZOLA”. Anyway, it was the middle of winter and there was this rather rotund English fanatic a couple of rows in front of us. I will never forget his fleshy torso, wobbling with every rotation as he spun his team shirt above his head, skin pinched pink by the icy cold wind; no doubt he was fortified by a few too many lagers. ‘Now, THAT, is a real fan’ I thought. I can’t say the same for the Phnom Penhians at our match. Their behaviour was much more sedate (see video below), not to mention climate-appropriate - taking shelter from the sun in the shadow of the stadium lights.

Football doesn’t really have the same following here but I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout, although perhaps that was just an optical illusion caused by the fact that everyone was squashed into the shady sections of the stadium.

3) The halftime entertainment
Here’s where the Cambodians kick the arse out of the elite football games in Europe. In Europe the half time entertainment consists of getting a beer and maybe a meat pie or hot chips. So Cambodia wins with its hip-hop performance...

...and THE most conservatively dressed cheerleaders of all time.

4) Player Accessibility
The elite players of the European Champions League go back to their million Euro mansions and exclusive clubs, whereas the Kyrgystani team goes to the local Russian restaurant for dinner. I happened to be there, attending my flatmate’s farewell dinner with all her work friends. Apart from the kitschy Russian paraphernalia pinned to the wall, my favourite part of the evening was the irony that my flatmate has been working with the International Criminal Court at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, whereas the Kyrgs have been committing crimes against humanity by stealing their brides. Just kidding. Those allegations are completely unfounded. They seem like good blokes.

So there you have it, just another Wednesday afternoon enjoying the world game.

Maybe it is because I come from a drought-stricken land, where every summer the threat of bush fires and the smoke of controlled burns hang suffocatingly in the air.

Maybe that’s the reason I love the rains so much.

Maybe it’s because this is the first time I have experienced a rainy season in Asia, because never before have I been caught up in the mad traffic on the street as the first few blobs of rain burst and sizzle on the hot pavement, the hot motorbikes, the hot people, frantic, scurrying like little ants when a menacing shadow descends. Maybe it is that shadow that descends, God’s idea of fair warning that you better find some shelter lickety split, and the way the darkness slowly seeps into your consciousness and makes you crane your neck upwards. OK, God, cheers for the heads up.

Maybe it has been too long since I have heard the kids squealing on the street, adding to the electrically charged atmosphere with the pure excitement that only a child can generate. Maybe it reminds me to live my life like that child.

Maybe it’s the downpour itself, the fact that nothing is spared and lessons are learned and things your mother told you are remembered; if you don’t park your bike under cover at the supermarket the seat will get wet and you have no choice but to sit on it and get a wet butt. Always. Carry. Tissues.

Maybe it’s the smell? You know the one I’m talking about. Like you’ve buried your head in a pile of damp soil until some earthy green grass has grown up your nostrils and filled your head with memories of rains gone by.

Or maybe it’s the clouds. Yeah, I think it’s the clouds.

I got the thumbs up this evening. A guy on a motorbike was stopped at the traffic lights adjacent to me when, out of the blue, he cracked a massive grin and raised his thumbs heavenward to signal his approval. His approval of what though? I couldn’t ask because I was involved in some pretty unladylike street-food consumption requiring both hands and a whole lot of shovelling. For this reason I am pretty sure he wasn’t giving me the thumbs up in that “hey sexy lady I like your style” kind of way. No No, I am pretty sure he was giving me the thumbs up because I was clearly enjoying my food so much. It’s the only reason I can think of. Honestly. I think he was endorsing my decision to abandon all good manners and decorum in the pursuit of guzzling my food while it was still hot off the hawker stall. What kind of heaven is this?! A place where the locals embrace, nay encourage rampant foodie behaviour?! Penang. That’s where.

I haven’t planned a single thing for this little trip. All I know about Penang is that which I have read on the Eating Asia blog and, amongst other things, that blog is one of the main reasons I came here. It’s also the reason for the unladylike streetside scoffing that earned me my thumbs up this evening. I had just been to Little India to score some fresh Puthu from a hawker stall. It’s a rice powdery, coconutty, unrefined cane-sugary, white pile of dessert heaven. Robyn and David capture it much better in their blog post. Essentially it is so delightfully light and fluffy when it comes out of the steamer that they recommend you eat it right then and there. It comes on a banana leaf with a side of fresh grated coconut and some brown sugar which you smoosh into little balls like you’re attempting to construct some sort of edible Playdoh snowman. Not so neat and tidy. Normally I would try to find a place near to the stall to perch and give the food the undivided attention it deserves. Tonight I couldn’t though, so I walked toward the hostel, only looking up in order to avoid oncoming traffic or to acknowledge a strangers’ thumbs-up of approval.

Warning: If you are a facebook or twitter friend then consider this a disclaimer. It’s highly likely that I’ll be posting a nauseating amount of “look-what-I-am-eating!!!!!!!” type photos over the next couple of days.

For those of you interested in a more personal update  I finished my 3-month internship yesterday, moved out of my apartment and am spending four days here hanging out with a couple of friends of mine from Sydney, champion Buckhunter Brooke and Fisherman (not Postman) Pat. I’m then going to Bangkok for a meeting with my new employer and to spend some time exploring the Bangkok food and karaoke scene with some other Kool Kats. I have a short-term contract with a regional tobacco control alliance www.seatca.org which I will either be completing from Bangkok or Phnom Penh, whichever I choose. I never got around to posting many stories from Phnom Penh but I have plenty of stories and will get to them in time.

Also, sorry about the lack of photos from tonight. Not only did I do absolutely zero research for this trip, I also neglected to charge my camera battery. BAD tourist. Must do better.

It has been a little quiet on The Human Sponge in the past couple of weeks *crickets chirping*.

It’s not because I have nothing to say, it’s just that I feel like I could write an entire blog post about every single thing that I do here, which results in me writing absolutely nothing about what I do here. See how that logic works? no? me neither. However, I did just realise that I have been in my apartment for 6 weeks now and have neglected to invite you in for a cup of tea and a tour. I’ve been in a pretty regular work/play routine for over a month now but I still delight in the quirky little moments that this city throws in my path on a daily basis, many of which exist in my own apartment. I acknowledge, in advance, that this is a very silly post. I promise to write a much more serious and insightful story when I get back from my two-day immunisation monitoring field trip that I am leaving on this morning.
Anyway, snap back to frivolity. What do you get in an apartment in Phnom Penh? n.b If you’re interested in cost, see below* You get:
1)  Limited kitchen equipment – here's your cup of tea, settle in for the tour. No mugs? no problem. There is nothing wrong with drinking tea from a pink wine tumbler (except those pesky chemicals which are released when you repeatedly pour boiling water into plastic)
 
2) Reminders of home – The clock is stopped at 12.55, perpetually 5 minutes away from lunch time. Cruel.
 
3)Company – this is Boris the deer who lives on my wall and watches over me when I sleep. I gave him the party hat because he looks a tad morose and generally disenchanted with his existence.
 
4a) Pets part 1 – I’ve never been a dog person but I imagine a dog person might find this cute? As a non dog person it gives me the creeps
 
4b) Pets part 2 – I call this photo composition "frog on giant mushroom on rattan table." Unlike fluffy (above) he is strictly an outdoor pet
 
4c) Pets part 3 – bird and butterfly…skewered
 
5) Philosophy lessons from cartoon character wall hangings
Bumblebee fairy say: “Happiness often sneaks in through a door you do not know you left ofen”
 
6) Geography lessons – this one I actually approve of
 
7) Pre-installed family photos – this is the guy who owns the apartment (on the left). He is deputy director of the national pediatric hospital. Sadly, because of the state of the health system here he runs a private practice (in his family home, which is the floor level of our three level house) in his spare time to supplement his meagre government salary. It means that I every day I walk past a line of strangers waiting for their appointment and it took me several weeks to figure out who actually lived downstairs and who was just waiting to get their in-grown toenail seen to.

Edit: someon on twitter just informed me that the chap on the right is Prime Minister Hun Sen -ha! - clearly happy that his in-grown toenail got seen to. (with all due respect)
 
8) A room with a view – this is the view from one of the big windows in my room. Thankfully I don’t look out it very often because, yes, that is poo on a pillow. I don’t know how it got there and I don’t have a clue how I would go about getting rid of it. It is, quite literally, weird shit.
 
And last but certainly not least
9) Displays of Khmer art at its finest – this is one of those 3D pictures which moves when you change position. all class here at Casa Jura.

Ohhhh, you wanted to see *actual* photos of my apartment? OK, here ya go.

(download)

Click here to download:

weird-stuff-in-my-apartment-a-photo-essay-axobfjuCgxEHvGutEAlF.zip (1.21 MB)

*I read quite a few travel and “location independent” blogs and I often find myself wishing that bloggers would divulge a little more about how much their living arrangements cost, so I’m putting it out there. I am sharing this 2-bedroom place with my flatmate for USD $450 a month ($225 each including gas, water, cable TV, unlimited wi-fi). It is probably more than we “should” be paying but we only wanted a three month lease and were honestly fed up with looking for an apartment for such a short period of time. You could definitely find cheaper places if you could wait longer and were willing to drive a harder bargain.